Scientist Jobs

Ayana Bio

Ayana Bio leverages cellular technology to produce bioactive ingredients that support health and wellness. Ayana Bio collaborates with global industry leaders in food and beverages, dietary supplements, sports nutrition, animal care, and cosmetics to bring standardized plant and fungal bioactives to market. We provide consumers with confidence in quality and reliability. Ayana Bio has partnered with Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology platform company that is redesigning the living world to solve some of the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, material, and more. Ayana Bio is backed by Viking Global Investors and Cascade Investment to democratize nature’s bioactives in a way that is standardized, safe, and sustainably sourced. For more information visit www.ayanabio.com.

General Role Description

This role is an integral part of the Plant Cell Platform team at Ayana Bio. We are looking for candidates who are driven to help shape Ayana Bio’s technology and excited to support our mission of democratizing standardized and safe complementary medicine for consumer health and wellness.

The role will focus on developing, maintaining, and assaying cell lines that produce bioactives with targeted health functions, and will ensure the timely launch of Ayana Bio’s technology. This role requires a versatile skill set, including plant genetic engineering, molecular biology, and culture performance assays. To thrive in this role, you should be self-motivated, meticulous, and efficient. A successful candidate will relish the opportunity to create something new and important. This position is full-time and located in Boston, MA.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain plant cell culture lines
• Engineer plant cell lines
• Support other areas within Ayana Bio such as process chemistry and engineering, intellectual property, strategy, regulatory, safety, product development, pilot scale manufacturing, and partnership development
• Evaluate cell culture performance through assays and omics technologies

Desired Experience and Capabilities

The successful applicant will have:

• Experience working with omics, analytical chemistry, bioinformatic data and analysis methods
• The ability to execute as an individual contributor and to collaborate with others
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Startup experience (preferred)
• The capability to think independently and to build consensus
• Transformed a variety of plant species
• A strong working knowledge of molecular biology techniques including state-of-the-art plant genetic engineering design tools and techniques
• Excellent record keeping, data management, and organizational skills (i.e., keep lab notebooks up to date and stay on top of key details that support cell line development and analysis)
• Completed a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (or related areas) focusing on topics such as plant metabolic engineering or molecular biology. Commensurate experiences also accepted
• Experience working with plant cell culture
• The desire to learn
• The ability to prioritize and pivot in a fast-paced environment

We also feel that it’s important to state the obvious here: Our industry lacks diversity, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ayana Bio is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and relishes the opportunity to work with people from all walks of life.

In addition, we are developing a powerful biological engineering platform and must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used. Having a diverse team to build our platform gives us the best chance to create something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. It is critical that we incorporate diverse voices and visions to create a more equitable future of biology.

It is the policy of Ayana Bio to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.

Applying for This Position

You will receive an application form to fill out if you are selected for an interview. Thank you!